well i'm going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture the u.s. economy shrank in the last quarter of two thousand and twelve the first time it shrunk in four years and all thanks to republicans and their addiction to austerity after seeing the damage that this is cause for republicans continue to push austerity or finally give up on these devastating policies that and more into nights alone liberal rubble and earlier this week new jersey governor chris christie vetoed a bill that would have increased that state's minimum wage by a dollar twenty five so why do republicans are believe that american workers don't have the right to make enough money to survive and support a family. you

need to know that the senate tackle the issue of gun control today in the first senate judiciary committee hearing of one hundred thirteenth congress the issue is new gun control legislation introduced by senator dianne feinstein last week former congresswoman gabby giffords herself a victim of gun violence gave an opening statement at the hearing calling on senators to take action to reduce gun violence violence is a big problem too many children are dying too many children we must do something. it's will be heart. but the time is now each month after. one of those children dying by gun violence was fifteen year old hadiya pendleton she was shot and killed tuesday night in

a random act of violence on the streets of chicago as last week she performed with her high school band and president obama's inauguration ceremony and today she's one of the more than fifteen hundred americans who've lost their lives to gun violence just since the newtown shooting last month also today three people were shot outside a business complex in phoenix and yet another mass shooting in the united states but despite all of this the n.r.a. has blood soaked chief wayne la pierre was on hand at the hearing to again be the pitch man for a gun industry that puts profit ahead of the lives of six year olds. well we're ready to participate in a meaningful effort to solve these pressing problems we must respectively but honestly and firmly disagree with some members of the committee and many in the media and all the gun control groups on what will keep our kids and keep our streets safe law abiding gun owners will not accept blame for the acts of violent

or to range criminals nor do we believe that government should dictate what we can lawfully own and use to protect our families by protect our families when want here means to say that homicidal paypal is still be able to easily buy a gun without a background check but according to a new gallup poll only eight percent of our nation agrees with the n.r.a. in opposing universal background checks to put that in perspective more people approve of congress polygamy and human cloning than agree with the n.r.a. on background check issues yet here was wayne la pierre again saying the universal background checks are a bad idea and getting promptly shut down by senator dick durbin. my problem with back background checks is you're never going to get criminals to go through universal background checks i mean they're. all the law abiding people you'll create enormous federal bureaucracy. unfunded the student appear that's the point

the criminals will go to purchase the guns because they'll be a background check will stop them from the original purchase you miss the point completely going to think it's base center i think you do this. after today's display from wayne la pierre and the n.r.a. my question is this why was he even at the hearing this is an organization that does disagrees with most of its own members on commonsense gun control and is completely out of touch with what the american people believe needs to be done about gun violence in america it's an organization that's been taken over by out of touch radical gun industry shills who lost nearly all every election they invested in back in two thousand and twelve on the other hand la pierre makes over a million dollars a year i guess if you pay well enough some people will say anything that's my take now let's turn over tonight's program. it's was there let's rumble join me for tonight's long liberal rumble our former

congressman ernest istook now distinguished fellow at the heritage foundation and horace cooper conservative commentator a research fellow at the national center for public policy research gentlemen thank you both for joining me thank you i appreciate all the kind words you've been saying. let's get into it knew you knew you could respond heading into this senate gun hearing consider these numbers among the twenty three richest countries the u.s. has the most guns in the weakest gun laws and accounts for eighty seven percent of all child gun related deaths what you guys make of that congress well you know it's interesting because just like anything in automobile three times more americans are killed every year by all the mobile accidents than with guns but we hand them automobiles will you but but again we don't. know the point here let me just finish the point though when you say we have to have it i mean even you know president obama claims he's not against guns but you know whether you're talking about hunting or for self defense. it's you know there's a ton of people whose lives were saved just like this guy in the wheelchair the

other day had a home intruder he was able to fend them off because he had to get all that stuff this is are the guns in a home are having a gun in the home is more likely to be used to get somebody in the home than it is against it in a trooper number one number two i agree with you you don't have to own a gun already i think but i don't know a little distance there but i feel that's not the point of view and that's only part of the c.d.c. says with what the body let's then let's them would you agree with your studies on a common sense research which includes deaths would you would you agree with me on a common sense impression as recently says the reason why we register cars require liability for car insurance cars for cars and car owners and car drivers and license car drivers is because they're capable of killing people why is it a public group and capable of killing people and why is it that hey it was one hundred twenty five one hundred twenty six when we first started requiring these things and it was only because cars were going fast enough that they were killing people we didn't we didn't we never write regular horses and you know and one

bodies so why not is to just a very simple question here say why not federal regulation why not why not simply say with guns register it insure it and prove proficiency what's why not do that it's just common sense study the group that does more training for people to guns and your brother need to talk to the does more training for people in firearm safety because the national i've been through an n.r.a. course i've been to the georgia police academy i am. quite familiar with those thoughts. and images are hit with their own a screed you use any circumstance any terrible tragedy as an opportunity to push an agenda that you've been trying to pay i think jennifer thirty years you know exactly nothing is changed there's been no circumstance a lot of people have to in fact in the facts of this case nothing that is being proposed would change a person from killing another person who owns a weapon taking that weapon and then. using it to engage in a massacre there is nothing that is being proposed but what address that the truth

of the matter is the c.d.c. identifies this danger because suicide is the leading cause of gun related deaths and so yes you did it in your home but that is a misleading way of describing the fact that overwhelmingly firearms are used legitimately to protect people from others and even the police and the supreme court admits it's your primary responsibility and where they are is and we know that a lot of people would commit suicide with guns probably wouldn't have committed suicide if they didn't have something that they knew would simply end their life going to golden gate bridge and explain to them because that's just not true. my best friend i was nineteen shot himself in the head and yeah i was going to highlight a bridge and i know we go we didn't take you down and you're great but you're saying that smaller capacity magazines wouldn't change things mark kelly would like to disagree with you here is that he speaking before congress gabby giffords has been. the shooter in tucson showed up with two thirty three round magazines one

which was in his nine millimeter unloaded the contents of that magazine in fifteen seconds very quickly it all happened very very fast before it first bullet went into gabby's head but what number thirteen went into a nine year old girl named christina taylor green who was very interested in democracy and our government and really deserved a full life could made it to advancing those ideas if he had a ten round magazine only back up when he tried to reload one thirty three round magazine with another thirty three round magazine he dropped it. and a woman named patricia mace grabbed it and it gave bystanders a time to tackle him i contend if that same thing happened when he was trying to reload one ten round magazine with another ten round magazine meaning he did not have access to a high capacity magazine and the same thing happened christina taylor green would

be alive today i start going to disagree with mark kelly just disagree with mark kelly the fact of the matter is this whether you have a five seven fifteen he would have pulled off at least five of those shots now with odds going to be that he might have hit five for five three four five we don't know but for the comments that i gave the believe that they cut bait i am just another magazine size and that's going to change any deaths it's just not not statistical so i think if you look for example new york city police if i remember correctly they typically have fifteen rounds in there's i mean there's nothing magic but there's they have fifteen rounds which seems to say well why do some people need fifteen and other people need ten and who's a better marksman such because i'll tell you those cops but i'll tell you this i think the trend is right now those of you who are pushing to say well let's knock it down to ten if you got that then you'd say let's knock it down to seven then

five business or related to seven or nine. barney fife used to keep in his pocket in the andy griffith show works quite well for him ok senator durbin asked a lot here if you believe the second amendment is there to protect against guys like you congressman here's what he had to say. we need the firepower and the ability to protect ourselves from our government. from our government from the police if they knock on our doors and we need to fight back do you agree with that point of view center on it without any doubt if you look at why our founding fathers put it there they had lived under the tyranny of king george and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny well chief johnson you've heard it the belief the n.r.a. is the second amendment has to give american citizens the firepower to fight back against you against our government that's not so how do you conduct your business

in enforcing the law and not knowing what is behind that door i find it to be it it's scary creepy and simply it's just not based on logic. congressman i've read the federalist papers that i've read and in fact wrote an op ed a couple weeks ago about the entire debate in the ratifying the virginia ratifying convention that led the second amendment the phrase king george or for that matter the phrase tragical government was never mentioned once so you know the second amendment is not there so americans can rise up and kill congressmen like you or your thoughts whether to a king george or the hassoun soldiers that he employed or you know just a general reference to the british but the point was that people felt the need they had to defend themselves against something and that time it might have been marauding indians it could have been marauding settlers it could have been any of a number of self-defense the point of the law yanking the governor and that is the point ok where we're going to go we're going to go i want to actually stop i mean

we come back we really have to take a break right now more of tonight's long live or on the right of the break. let me let me i want to know why don't you let me ask you a question. here on this network is what we're having a debate we have our knives out. the truth is this is just a bad thing there's again here to secure a thing would be an ideal way to talk about surveillance we. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a donor. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about money you certainly are a fool you know what that is my theory sounds great but i don't want to be listening to featuring the see on limbaugh and the christian public. can secure the support of the. you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells of sensationalistic garbage because that breaking news i'm happy martin and we're going to break this that it's.

but act alone liberal rival i'm joined by former congressman ernest istook and horoscope are let's get back to horace you wanted some final thoughts on gun control real quick there's a difference between the debates that happen in the legislatures as the amendment was being ratified and the debates that occurred as it was being drafted in the congress of the united states and the history is very clear in the congress of the united states and that's what judges use is their intentions when they submitted this to the public some states may have used other justifications to get it through but those justifications are not binding in terms of interpreting the law i think you'd find fascinating i'm not disagreeing i think you'd find fascinating correspondence between jefferson and madison when it was in december of seventeen.

eighty seven right after the when he first in fact was the christmas christmassy december twenty fourth. one jefferson had gotten the first draft of the constitution and he i'll let you read it yourself it will move along new data released today by the department of commerce shows that the u.s. economy shrank in the fourth quarter of two thousand and twelve the first time our economy has shrunk since two thousand and nine is one tenth of one percent contraction in our economy is mostly due to defense spending slowing down the war in iraq being wound down according to the report real federal government consumption expenditures in gross investment decreased fifteen percent the fourth quarter in contrast to an increase of nine point five percent the third so now we know the government spending affects economic growth why republicans calling for more spending cuts congress and i would think that government taxes also influence economic growth and there's a chilling effect when people know that tax increases were on the horizon or there's uncertainty there and how are you going to get

a six hundred seventy thousand you can automatically jump to a conclusion well it's defense spending cuts after all it was it was demi. brats who wanted as this you know congressional deal they wanted the defense cuts to be on the table republicans wanted other cuts and that's what you know about your side so it's to be found spending on the during the last quarter i don't see this is partisan frankly the defense spending during the last quarter was down twenty three point one percent that reduced g.d.p. i mean a g.d.p. is not a surrogate going to add what numbers you're looking at there tom but his defense spending is not going to drop by him a magnitude of twenty three percent of one quarter especially not when that's not consistent with the you see quest ration numbers so i don't know your numbers there that you're i don't like to see them makes it so so i think that some sort of subset that you're looking at as opposed to overall defense spending but the over after almost as it is personnel the overall issue is this and we've been arguing for a while government is taking up too much space the spending that it's spilling crowds

out the private sector the taxing that it's doing crowds out the private sector as the congressman now notes and we've increased the amount of taxing along with this parallel presence of the government in terms of its g.d.p. presence absolutely we must reduce the g.d.p. presence of the federal government and we must also lower taxes that it's like government as a percentage of g.d.p. is you know lower than percent and you know what would happen if interest rates went up one percent because we're carrying a debt of sixteen point four trillion dollars very expensive so well the interest alone would go up by a hundred sixty four billion dollars a year more that government would need just to pay that i don't disagree that when ronald reagan artists and all george washington ran out of fairness to this debt. ok we're going to see how much has it gone up during obama's term is it five trillion or six let's also talk about this we just got to deal right and we're going to raise the rates appropriately on the four hundred k. plus crowd the money that we're going to raise this year has already been spent on

this arcane samy just hurricane sandy the money race from them. this is not the place ok go get some results get back here's this one i want to use it's not just hurricane sandy relief they spend a lot of other things too here's a chart on non-defense discretionary spending levels are the lowest since the one nine hundred sixty s. and our taxes right now are at the levels that they were in the one nine hundred fifty s. and you're saying taxing education is shared only d.p. there well if you want it as a share of per capita basis that's different ways to look at it you can look at it on a per capita basis and you will see that actually during the obama administration spending as a percentage of per capita basis gone down nine percent and obama came into office it went up consistently during both the bush and having served on the defense subcommittee of appropriations i realize that i'm in charge such as that people will only use basic defense spending they may or may not include the cost of this is what it would be so i understand what portion of it would be my point is is just

. is that we're not doing enough on defense spending i'm going to agree with you right now now my point is i thought our levels of spending right now are not that different than they were in one nine hundred fifty and our level of taxation is radically lower than one hundred fifty nine hundred sixty nine hundred seventy the top tax rate was ninety one percent corporations are paying over thirty five percent in spending which of taxation which is what is driving out everything else when you're looking at you know the big three medicare medicaid social security don't take social those are going to get a component of the first and only generation that were double taxed to pay not only for their retirement or their parents but also for their own retirement they've got two point seven trillion dollars sitting in a trust next generation there is no return tax trillion dollars must we do something to cut spending there is no give them this little bit of the reform again now member of a community that just hate those treasury bills treasury george w. bush when it's just a million dollars in treasury bills they didn't exist he didn't have the money it's

just a question of when do international bankers stop accepting after a while so i give the international bankers that was on top of surgery we're selling them to ourselves right and we're selling said all of the fed to the brain to the nato and to the chinese we're selling it on what happens when the market value is demonstrated not to be valuable precisely because people believe we're never going to be able make hold on those things interest rates go up three percent that's almost five hundred billion dollars more you have a czar we tore a hole you know what happens when i mean i don't need to get out of it looking we can look at you in germany we can look at japan we can look at a lot of countries in the last hundred lawyers in the last hundred years and see what happens when the government uses the central bank the way that they try to do to deal with the problems are you talking about after the thirty first i should austerity that was the way that we can find quite intentional on the part of the germans that was their way of saying screw you to us because we put all that you want a vacation doesn't matter i mean they now days they want

a value you know divide. are limitless this post on tape world war two according to nielsen television ratings fox news has had its lowest viewership among key demographic since two thousand and one this month and fellow conservative mouthpiece rush limbaugh's says the reason why is because president obama is promoting a secondary boycott limbaugh's words against those he disagrees with like fox news and limbaugh so are fox's remains in the tank because a white house conspiracy to sally's right wing media or have the american people finally woken up to the steady far right polarization of fox news and decided that they no longer want to be less informed than people who watch no use at all or a similar that i've seen the study and they've been debunked it's absolutely not true that fox viewers less informed they may have gotten anybody believe more things that are wrong there are more informed than normal but. label this is new to six numbers are down that's the point you see you talking about the holiday season people were busy with thanksgiving they were busy busy at christmas the key is not

whether somebody is ratings were down but their share their portion of the audience the fact that the total audience is down to find that if you're here is the same then then your audience goes down too but again i'm not sure necessarily. what are your thoughts this year is still double that of c.n.n. is still greater than that of m s n b c n c n.b.c. and some of the other programs that are out there now if i were an investor in fox i'd be wanting to know what are you doing to change that direction but it's clearly not the case that all of the other progressive programs are somehow expanded those programs don't have an audience but what i see because i think they are and so they want to want to be america a lot of politics and frankly that happens on both sides and i think you know we're posed absolutely to as well i think is a fairly weak topic republicans want to refight the civil war after president obama unveiled new gun control executive orders a group of tea party lawmakers in mississippi introduced legislation to create

a permanent committee in that state which would be dedicated to no. overturning federal laws that mississippi tea partiers don't like and mississippi isn't alone in pennsylvania wyoming and texas republicans have also introduced legislation making forcing federal gun control laws a crime was a settled with the articles of confederation and being put aside in the constitution being ratified it and then settled again with the civil war i mean absolutely and that's why all that pot smoking legislation in the state of colorado i know you objecting to and all of the the states that are passing these laws in violation of the defense of marriage act i know you're objecting to it is remarkable how you progressive pick and choose the american people have always been interested in saying sometimes of the federal government i want to put my thumb in your eye and this is just another or i agree with you right in both those cases you've got the supremacy clause is in conflict with what the states are doing well and some fortune and i mean you know the obama administration says when the state

of colorado in the state of washington passed laws to say you can use marijuana for medical as well and have arm and yet other than what in this case it's not even restricted to so-called medical which is a joke in most places as far as the criteria they put in but the federal government rather than saying to colorado and washington look we've got something called the supremacy clause in the constitution and the united states supreme court has held that in this area it is federal law that governs but instead of saying the same thing you're saying about the supremacy clause which is proper constitutional law the obama administration says oh but it's something i like so i'm going to ignore the fact that they're thumbing their nose at our laws because obama's team happens to be on their side that's the real problem an equal enforcement rather than having to do all of ya'll there's all this like to everybody would you suggest that in colorado and california are awash in state rather than we should. bring in federal

forces you've got the drug enforcement agents who have you know there but if you like crazy in california right now medical examiner and the whole point here is if you want a system of order in this country if you don't want people rebellion ok so what i want to let me those well we've got just as you know that for an enduring we're going to enforce the law i agree not sit on it we're all going to have a million we're all in agreement on us we're all in agreement on the supremacy clause so why would say what's your position on states saying they're going to ignore the supremacy clause they should eventually do that now because if they think that the federal government has overstepped its bounds they can challenge if they go to a secret court and so forth forwards with this letting off steam and we let it get let off steam it's no big deal in this particular instance however i believe that you can't have an equal enforcement the first time that mississippi or any other state moves forward with some action that's contrary to the supremacy clause they

need to be smacked down but social colorado and so should leave little there's no yeah there we're going to go over this is a change in federal law being tell the federal government you maybe ought not to be doing so many things and maybe we wouldn't have conflicts the way that we do now let's come back to a small dose of you're calling for the end of doma and the end of federal drug laws if i mean with the it right of if we could get rid of a quarter or more of government in its existence at the federal level i take that trade off ok ernest earth is talk or as cooper thank you both of you thanks tom tonight. coming up four hundred billionaires in america have more wealth than one hundred fifty million other americans combined ninety's billionaires have the right to such extraordinary wealth while working class americans don't have the right to a living wage.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is. welcome to the big picture.

a little worse if you're going to. the white house for the. minute. because you've never seen anything like this i'm told.

all about the big picture i'm coming up in this half hour while america's billionaires spend their days living in the lap of luxury millions of hardworking americans are worrying about how they'll survive day to day this is so wrong to give working class americans those who are barely scraping by off the minimum wage a higher wage to help them survive and while it hasn't been in the news much lately the keystone x.l. pipeline project is still very much alive just like this nation's addiction to fossil fuels is the time we moved away from these environment destroying forms of energy and instead invested in the cleaner and greener energy sources that so many other countries are already using. in screwed news new jersey governor chris christie might be very popular right now but he sure is not

a friend of working people in the garden state this week christie vetoed a bill passed out of the state senate that would have increased that state's minimum wage from seven twenty five an hour to eight fifty an hour currently the federal minimum wage is seven twenty five an hour and has been at that rate since two thousand and nine but if it had kept up with inflation starting in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight the minimum wage right now would be over ten dollars and fifty cents an hour. let me repeat that if the minimum wage today were to have the same purchasing power it had in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight it would be well over ten dollars an hour instead of the seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour currently is in all the state in jersey's senate wanted to do is modestly raise that state's minimum wage to eight dollars and fifty cents an hour still well below the ten dollars plus where it needs to be for minimum wage workers to get by but governor christie vetoed it arguing the pain working people in his state more money will hurt the economic recovery in new jersey where the unemployment rate is nine point six percent well above the national unemployment rate but governor

christie is still hypnotized by trickle down economics of the sort of economics that says if you give a bunch of rich people tax cuts and all that extra money they will eventually trickle down on to the rest of us and it will do more than just create a nation of us after thirty years of trickle down economics we know what really happens here goes on economics just makes us a nation of peons of peons working for a minimum wage this last half its value since the nine hundred sixty s. if christie and the rest of the conservative movement would step out of the bubble and they see the getting more money to working people actually does help the economy in new jersey policy perspective analyze the economic economic impact in new jersey of raising the minimum wage and found it would lead to an economic boom it would mean four hundred thirty nine million more dollars in the hands of working people in that state that would increase economic activity by two hundred seventy eight million dollars in the first year and an equivalent of two thousand four

hundred twenty new full time jobs would be created all of this from raising the minimum wage for working people across the state a move that governor chris christie just vetoed in all around the country was we're watching the breakdown of this free market laissez faire capitalist model that we've been told for thirty years is going to produce great high paying jobs for everyone reaganomics hasn't worked. reaganomics has failed and now that it's failed now that high paying jobs are being outsourced and low paying jobs just don't cut it for most americans this is a time to consider government solutions to ensure that everyone has a right to a job and a right to a living wage i think so and franklin franklin delano roosevelt thought so too that's why his nineteen forty four state of the union address roosevelt introduced what he called a second bill of rights it was an economic bill of rights that would guarantee every american a right to employment a right to a living wage a right to housing health care education retirement and the right to compete in

a marketplace free from monopoly kerry was back in one hundred forty four lane an all out. its second bill of rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity going to be a spam bridgeboro regardless of. race creed among the. the right to a useful and remunerated job in the industry was trumped up by mines throughout the many right to learn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreate a right of every farm a raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living the right of every businessman large and small on prayed in an atmosphere of freedom freedom from on fair competition on dominate my

monopoly is at home or abroad on the right of every family to a decent home right to adequate medical care the opportunity to a tree and enjoy i know the right to adequate protection. from economic fears of all a sickness accident and unemployment the right to a good education all of the rights spell security. unfortunately have died before you could really fight for the second bill of rights but today is working people struggle like they have never struggled before since the time of f.d.r. since the great depression we should be taking a second look at f.d.r.'s second bill of rights in particular the right to a living wage right. well being and recreate

with his veto this week we learned that governor chris christie disagrees with f.d.r. he disagrees the working americans living in the wealthiest nation on the planet should have a right to a job at a wage at that job that affords them to live at least a reasonable one so why is that why is it that four hundred billionaires in america have the right to own more wealth than one hundred fifty million other americans combined yet working people in new jersey don't have a right to a small increase in their minimum wage let's ask my next guest you know as barry joins me now he's an entrepreneur and host of the truth for america radio show and author of the book conscientious equity you know welcome back. thanks for having me thanks for joining us so what do you think was going through chris christie's mind when he vetoed you know a block and a half for people who were still making less than they would have made in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight at minimum wage jobs. well first i think f.d.r. would also support a right to work and be free from oppressive unions but governor christie he's got

it right i mean our entrepreneurs are our job creators are risk takers they're taking over the nose with this obama economy where tommy it never ceases to amaze me how progressives are so competent at spending other people's money neal the job creators when are the people who is all this money for these taxes and for this health care obamacare health rates going up twenty percent regulation causing our economy a trillion dollars a year let's start getting rid of some of these burdens so we can raise the minimum wage can't just do one nice nice other nice screed neal but if you go back to the one nine hundred thirty five and you. look at every time the minimum wage has been increased from one hundred thirty five it was first put into law until today every time the minimum wage has gone up if you if you look at two and three year increments who takes a year or so for these kind of things to work their way through the economy first of all you don't see any drops it's not like i'm same two or three years because the first first year falls apart it doesn't but over a two or three year period what you see is what in the setup where i was talking

about today over two thousand new jobs would be created in your city because the real job creators are people like you and they want to get in their pockets and they buy things two thousand jobs would be lost to new jersey because they would be going to florida or texas or south carolina look at the financial industry just said they're leaving new york and going to florida which is a right to work no tax state look at what's happened to manufacturing in places like michigan in the lloyd it's going to texas so carolina tennessee going to christie's got it right he doesn't want to lose jobs i don't see how you can neal i lived in oregon is going to increase jobs i lived in oregon i went to the south they're going to asia i lived in oregon when they raised their minimum wage by almost two dollars you know what happened it became more prosperous the prosperity it's not only under the reagan administration you know it was during the limit there should business people know what happened was people said you know we had more people who had more money in their pockets they were buying more things there were more people they could afford to go out for dinner there were more to be the

waiters were making more money the restaurants were making what they also way raise the minimum wage for waiters from two dollars and twenty five cents to eight dollars and fifty cents i mean now it's a major change and where they were the result of that prosperity. tom god knows that i want people to have a better life but you do that by creating prosperity by having a group really interested me just your billionaire isn't in your last segment you said that the economy is shrinking well that's right it's because of the obama policies that shrinking is because business is cannot afford to do business under the obama policies health care taxes regulations a no win or gee actually one of the one of the things that causes this or in another million there are. no budget appropriate jobs one of the thought one of the reasons why the g.d.p. shrank was because the cost of health care went down because of obamacare because of fission so to speak on obamacare because the cost of health care went down i just going through a renewal process for three hundred employees and my health provider says get ready

for a twenty percent increase and yet because it would arrive i can privations companies going to scream and yell no no no it's because i'm becoming compliant a steamer how is that he's got to make his billion dollars and my people these people who are struggling and working so hard they're going to have lists benefits for more cause time is that fair is that right no it's not and that's why i think we should have a national single payer health care system i think it's insane that we pay about twice as much as every other developments in the world get rid of we have like when we have a lower average length of life and lower quality of life but but that has nothing to do with the minimum wage the minimum wage going up i'm not talking about the raising of the daily existence i'm not talking about raising wages on people who are making seventy thousand ninety thousand dollars a year i'm not talking about rate you know raising wages on billionaires god knows they've done really really well their wages have gone up two hundred seventy five percent since reagan came into office average working people their wages have gone up the last actually if you include since the bush recession their wages have gone

down since reagan became president so you know why does the throw a bone to the dog why not say to the working people who are trying to make it on the minimum wage we're going to take your minimum wage back to where it was in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight the economy was doing fine and so. you know tom tom already america has the highest corporate tax rates in the industrialized nonsense we just recently surpassed japan when i'm not in a readout in trash collection creators in our entrepreneurs and say hey look our job really is a minimum wage worker kidding you are going our job we're going to raise how the minimum wage workers and our job creators are to a minimum wage workers i would be the first one to say if you were to take cost out of doing business i would love to pay my employees more i would love to provide them more benefits but as i said to begin this did it that progressives are so good at spending other people's money i just don't have the money to pay for this tom ok

. just to wrap this up but i want to say for the record that i think you and i are both entrepreneurs that if somebody can do business in a way that at least allows their workers to have a decent life it's got a broken business model and i i'm guessing you would you would agree with me on that i would agree tom but it's just how we get there we all want to get to this how we get away for a week and there is well different and we will live to debate that another time neal thanks a lot and i look forward to it thank you. coming up all across the globe nations are turning to clean sources of energy like the wind turbines off the coast of the u.k. or the solar panels across the german countryside but you don't see so much of that here in the u.s. what can you do to make america a nation of cleaning green energy sources so you and i still eat. there.

let me let me i want to know we're going to let me ask you a question from. here on this network is what we have in the bank we have our nine south facing. this right it's a bad thing never get here in a great way of being i don't even talk about surveillance me.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly is think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture. the worst journalist the. white house chief of a. radio guy. minestrone quick. quote good news if you've never seen anything like this i'm cold.

now a quick update to our republicans are trying to rig future elections news turns out republican efforts to change the electoral college votes are counted in several blue states to benefit republicans have hit at least a temporary wall at one point it looked like republicans in pennsylvania ohio wisconsin virginia and michigan would all pursue this change immediately but now prominent republicans are backing off at least for the moment they have four years to do this after all a spokesperson for ohio governor case it said they will not change the electoral college in ohio virginia governor bob mcdonnell also came out opposed to the legislation and on tuesday the virginia state senate privileges and elections committee voted down a bill which would have changed how that state awards its electoral college votes all democrats on the committee voted against the bill as did four of eight

republicans officially putting an end for the moment to the election rigging effort in that state meanwhile in michigan where republicans were considering a similar vote rigging election rigging scheme governor rick snyder slammed the idea saying he doesn't think it's the appropriate time to look at it. next summer he also said i'm very skeptical of the idea i really view it as a question of you don't want to change the playing field so it's an unfair advantage to someone then again snyder was the same governor who said he wasn't interested in passing right to work for less legislation in michigan last year and then within a month or so turned right around and passed the right to work for us law anyway. but at least for now it appears the republican election rigging effort is on the whole so now is the time for progressives to get active and push for a national popular vote to make sure republicans can't get away with these antics in the future go to national popular vote dot com to get involved.

it's the good the bad in the very very potent tory asli ugly good patrice. let's be a south african mining billionaire announced earlier today that he will be giving a half of his fortune including future earnings to charity worth around two point seven billion dollars what's up he said that he wanted to join the giving pledge which encourages the world's wealthiest to give at least half of their wealth to charity speaking about his donation most said he said that the money will be used to help the large portion of quote poor and disadvantaged and marginalised south africa. over half of south africans live before the poverty we can only hope that america's billionaires decide to stand alongside mr once and donate some of their

vast fortunes to help the entire nation and especially those americans who struggle to survive. the bad tenor of tennessee state senator stacey campfield republican has a proposed bill in the tennessee state senate that would tie a family's welfare benefits to their children's academic success can feel believes that by threatening to take away a family's welfare benefits children who performed poorly in school may perform better because their parents will be more more motivated to see them succeed as work camp field doesn't realize is that children from families who receive welfare benefits who performed poorly in school are doing so most likely because of their. family situation the stress of having to worry about their family surviving day to day affects their academic performance so in reality taking away welfare benefits or poor academic performance will only make the problem worse not better. and the

very very ugly united states conference of catholic bishops a group of catholic bishops is submitted to briefs to the u.s. supreme court in the two marriage equality cases that are currently before that court in both of the briefs the group argues that the court should rule in favor of l.g.b. t. discrimination because the community doesn't deserve any legal protection since the only thing that defines them is their bollen terry actions the brief goes on to state that quote indeed with this distinction in mind this court has recognized that a finding of a suspect or quasi suspect class for equal protection purposes is simply inappropriate and the distinguishing characteristic is a proper product of voluntary action. it's been proven time after time that being homosexual is not a choice a person doesn't just wake up one day and decide to be gay and yet the conference of catholic bishops argues that the l.g.b. di community should be denied rights because of this faulty logic and that he's

here. right now way down in texas a foreign corporation trans canada is using our government's fifth amendment right of eminent domain to confiscate private land belonging to americans to build a massive oil pipeline so trans canada can ship oil from the you know from canada down to the gulf of mexico and then ship it from the gulf of mexico to non americans all around the world. oil by the way that's going to accelerate our planet's plunge into global warming induced catastrophe so the question is

why last year president obama approved the southern leg of the keystone x.l. pipeline which will transport deadly canadian tar sands oil from oklahoma down to the gulf of mexico. where it's going to be refined and then promptly placed on oil barges to be sold in south america europe asia and mexico they get the oil we get the poison coming out of the refinery smokestacks. odds are little oil from the keystone x.l. pipeline is actually going to make it into american markets according to trans canada itself this product will not reduce the price of gas the united states according to trans canada itself this project project will actually increase gas prices in the american midwest it will not reduce our dependence on foreign oil. it will create only a few thousand temporary jobs and a few hundred permanent jobs and it's going to put our land and underground

aquifers at risk of oil contamination while presenting to terrorists and we're all supposed to be afraid of terrorists sweet little thousand mile long target that they can take out with just a little bit of dynamite. and rather than slowing climate change this pipeline will take us over the tipping point. environmentalist like bill mckibben call it a ticking time bomb for the environment. and nasa scientist james hansen one of the most respected scientists on earth and one of the leading experts on the planet on global climate change calls completion of the pipeline quote game over for the planet and quote. actually the plan will be just fine it's game over for us. so again why is construction of this pipeline allowed to continue. why would a foreign corporation push so hard that people like seventy eight year old great

grandmother eleanor fairchild an actress daryl hannah were arrested last october for trespassing on their on her own property as she tried to stop trans canada's bulldozers from repeat a hole through her three hundred acre ranch. why is the state of texas allowing a foreign corporation to seize privately owned texans land through eminent domain to build an oil pipeline when in two thousand the state trance to predation department for been the use of eminent domain to build new one roads across texas. and why is it that we've allowed this foreign corporation trans canada to launch numerous slapp suits these are basically nuisance suits against peaceful activists and property owners threatening them with losing their homes and life savings if they continue protesting for the construction of the pipeline. and most importantly

why residing on a rapidly warming planet why are we doubling down on nine hundred centuries dirty energy sources like fossil fuels when we should be focusing on twenty first century clean energy sources like solar and wind i mean consider this last week in chattanooga looks like a river last week in chattanooga tennessee a massive solar for this power facility comprising over thirty three thousand six hundred individual solar modules capable of producing thirteen point one gigawatt hours of electricity every year which just turned on. this big enough to power twelve hundred homes but instead it's going to use to power a volkswagen manufacturing plant they paid for it and put it there it's the biggest solar installation ever built in the state of tennessee the solar farm was built by an american company so it can rant no canadian tar oil sands necessary

so instead of letting foreign companies build terrorist target oil pipelines across our entire country. shouldn't we be supporting homegrown country companies that can make america the worldwide leader in renewable energy. another for example did you know that the united states just passed germany as the number two country in the world when it comes to producing wind power. did you know that the largest wind farm in the world the all to wind energy center is located right here in the united states in kern county california. but apartment of energy estimates that twenty percent of our national energy could be produced by wind come twenty thirty. but that's only if our government embraces wind power with the same enthusiasm that we're embracing candor there's tar sands oil. this is a no brainer and it's what the rest of the world is doing to. the world is rushing

toward clean energy from the one point three million solar systems currently on line in germany the rooftops across the country producing twenty eight billion kilowatts of energy annually to the londoner a offshore wind farm the largest of its kind producing six hundred and thirty kilowatts of electricity enough to power more than four hundred seventy thousand homes just windmills off the coast of england so given all this tell me again why we're building the keystone x.l. pipeline. why with all this potential for clean and renewable energy and the technologies the air we're not talking about the future it's here now why are we arrested americans for trespassing on their own property. it sure looks like it's just so a foreign corporation can get rid of their toxic oil and

a handful of billionaires in texas can make big profits refining and exporting. our clean energy six success stories seem to be hidden from the news media they never talk about it and our lawmakers are just didn't seem to the tune of big oil turning our nation in a place where foreign corporations like trans canada can do the dirty work of fossil fuel refining are far away from their own populations the president spoke about climate change in second inaugural but we'll have a chance to do something more than give a good speech come march when the rest of the keystone x.l. pipeline is set to be approved so let's keep the pressure on our lawmakers and on our newsmedia all around the world and right here at home we see the potential for clean energy use on a massive scale we have twenty first century century energy solutions that work now today we don't need another nineteenth century oil. and that's the way it is the night wednesday january thirtieth two thousand and twelve and don't forget

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